A White Mask, a Yellow Robe

After an hour of intense meditation and prayer, the mask began to make more sense to Xarus. The item was indeed magical, and indeed radiated the aura so familiar to him in his dreams, the soft golden glow of his goddess. It filled him with a warmth and nostalgia, long memories of home now far away. It was dead in the night now, and the plains were silent, devoid of any life for what seemed like miles. It seemed like it would be a slow night on watch duty.

Xarus looked over at his friends, some sleeping and some up looking in the opposite direction. Safe enough, he figured, and he brought the mask up slowly to his face. Hesitation gripped him for a moment, as if he were about to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He shook the feeling, and smiled. This was an artifact of the church, and he was one of the truly faithful. Nothing could be more right, so nothing should feel wrong.

As Xarus placed the mask upon his face, whispers filled his ears. He found himself once again before the cloaked figure of his goddess. She enveloped him in long, yellow arms, and pouring from her he felt acceptance. Acceptance like he had never felt growing up, a deep love and appreciation that not even his friends gave to him. His mother, drawing him close with her impossibly long limbs, whispered into his ears secrets. Secrets about various other so-called gods, and their lowly place below her in this world. Their talk lasted hundreds of years, details so rich that each story took a life time. Xarus aged until his legs were mush, until his beard grew long into the ground, until all his sense failed him, yet the whispering of his loving goddess continues, her embrace alone staving off the effect of death.

Suddenly he was looking back out at the night sky. A cold sweat covered his face, and he looked around. In his hands was the mask. At some point he had enough sense to clutch at it and remove it. Xarus sat for a moment in silence, realizing all he now knew about a world much larger than him. Then he felt the wriggling under his clothing. Sure enough, coming from his upper arms and legs were odd, yellow tentacles, much like the arms of his loving goddess. Looking at them, wriggling independently of his will, he couldn't help but escape the idea that these were the gifts of a loving mother; a sign of his true devotion. No one served the goddess like Xarus. No one was closer to her loving embrace than him.